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Have you considered adding a rain garden to your landscape to enhance its beauty, improve drainage and create wildlife habitat? The lovely rain garden pictured above can be a part of your garden. Wild About Ewing, a joint project of the Ewing Environmental Commission and Green Team, encourages you attend our presentation and learn more about gardening for wildlife and protecting our waterways at the same time.

Rain gardens can help us manage stormwater runoff from rooftops, driveways, lawns, roads, and other hard surfaces. They look like regular perennial gardens, but they are much more. During a storm, a rain garden fills with water, and the water slowly filters into the ground rather than running into storm sewers. By capturing stormwater, rain gardens help to reduce the impact of human activities and pollution in the environment such as road sediment/salt, fertilizers, pesticides, bacteria from pet waste, eroded soil, grass clippings, litter, etc. This helps protect the health of our waterways. Rain gardens also add beauty to neighborhood and provide wildlife habitat.

In this 1.5 hour evening workshop, homeowners can learn how to plan and plant their own raingarden, enhancing their property and their neighborhood! Now is a good time to plan a raingarden for planting this spring.

Presenter: Kory Kreiseder, Stormwater Specialist with The Watershed Institute. Kory has been with The Watershed Institute since April 2017 as the Stormwater Specialist with the Policy and Advocacy team as well as the Science and Stewardship team. Previously she spent three years as an urban conservation specialist for the Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District, where she advised governments, businesses and residents on stormwater management issues. Currently, she is working with Hopewell Borough through on the restoration of the Beden Brook funded by a grant received from NJ Department of Environmental Protection. This project will install over 25 different green infrastructure practices including rain gardens, cisterns, porous paving, etc.

Date: Tuesday, May14Time: 7 pmLocation: Ewing Senior and Community Center, 999 Lower Ferry Road, EwingCost: Free and open to the public

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Wild About Ewing! is extremely excited to announce that they will sponsor Part II of an introductory series to the National Wildlife Federation’s Community Wildlife Habitat Project and how gardeners in Ewing are providing much needed wildlife habitat while getting credit for both themselves and their community at the Ewing Branch Library, 61 Scotch Road, Ewing on Monday, March 25th at 7 pm. Mary Anne Borge, a local naturalist, writer, photographer and educator, will tell you what you can you do to attract birds to your garden and which plants are best to entice bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects to make their homes with you. She will also share maintenance techniques that are the most hospitable for these garden visitors and residents.

Mary Anne Borge is a naturalist, writer, photographer, and educator. She is the Associate Editor for Butterfly Gardener magazine, a publication of the North American Butterfly Association; an instructor and naturalist at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve in New Hope, Pennsylvania; a Pennsylvania Master Naturalist, and the team leader for Lambertville Goes Wild. Her photographs have been featured in numerous publications. She shares her love of nature through her writing and photography at the-natural-web.org.

Part 1 of the series, entitled Gardening for Wildlife in the Suburban Landscape, was presented to the community on February 25th and we were thrilled to see so many interested Ewing gardeners. We hope that this will be start of a great gardening season for wildlife this spring and for the future!

To learn more about gardening for wildlife and the Ewing Community Wildlife Habitat Project (or Wild About Ewing!) please go to ewingwildlifegardens.com

Date: Monday, March 25thTime: 7pmLocation: Ewing Branch Library, 61 Scotch RoadCost: Free and open to the public

Willow trees are among the first trees to get their leaves in the Spring and the last to lose their leaves in the Fall. There are over 400 different species of willow trees throughout the world. Among them, the Black Willow is native to New Jersey, while the Weeping Willow has its origin in northern China. Both have slender green leaves from 3 to 6 inches long. In the Fall they turn a brilliant yellow. The tiny flowers on these trees are both male and female, appearing just before or at the same time as the leaves.

The major differences between these two trees are their shape and their bark. The small branches on a weeping willow are very slender and smooth, hanging or drooping for long distances, almost rope-like, making its shape almost as wide as it is tall. Its bark is slightly furrowed. The branches are very dense making it a great shade tree. A mature black willow tree is upright, with a spreading irregular crown. Its bark is more deeply furrowed. Both willows will be 40 to 60 feet high, growing as much as eight feet per year, and requiring lots of water. They can easily dominate a spot in your yard, and it is important to keep this in mind when deciding where to plant these trees.

Dow Gardens , Dow Gardens, Bugwood.org

The milky sap of willows contains a substance called salicylic acid. In the fifth century B.C. Hippocrates, a physician who lived in ancient Greece, discovered that when willow bark was chewed it could lower fever and reduce pain. Native Americans discovered the healing properties of willow bark and used it to treat fever, arthritis, headaches, and toothaches. In some tribes, the willow was known as the toothache tree. In the late seventeenth century scientists identified and named salicylic acid. But because the acid caused the stomach to be upset it was not widely used till the late 1800’s when a synthetic version was developed that was gentler on the stomach. It was produced by a company called “Bayer”, and called “aspirin”.

Why are there not more of these trees growing in our landscapes? Both need lots of water and their shallow root system will ‘attack’ any underground water lines, utility lines, and septic tanks. For this reason, they should not be planted any closer than 100 feet from your or your neighbor’s water lines. Another reason is the amount of work required to maintain the tree. The small branches on the tree can break off in stormy conditions, and a weeping willow needs to be pruned regularly to maintain its beautiful shape.

Wildlife Value

Paul Wray, Iowa State University, Bugwood.org

Finally, we would be remiss in our overview of this beautiful species, if we didn’t mention their numerous ecosystem contributions. Insects of all types derive value from our native Salix species including over 400 species of Lepidoptera, which use the tree as a host plant. The long tube-shaped catkins are among the first to support native pollinators each spring providing much a needed source of nectar and pollen for honey bees as they emerge after long cold winters. And birds make use of the catkins and downy fibers of the seeds when making their nests. The tree foliage and twigs also support numerous grazing mammals such as beaver, rabbits, and hares. Finally, our native willows also serve as excellent soil stabilizers for eroding stream banks when planted to hold the soil in road cuts and embankments. In summary, willows make significant contributions to wildlife habitat and are a vital part of the food web for many species from the smallest microorganisms up through larger mammals. Assuming space and location requirements are met, a willow is deserving of a place in your landscape.

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Wild About Ewing! will sponsor an introduction to the National Wildlife Federation’s Community Wildlife Habitat Project and how gardeners in Ewing are providing much needed wildlife habitat while getting credit for both themselves and their community at the Mercer County Library, Ewing Branch, 61 Scotch Road, Ewing on Monday, February 25th at 7 pm. Joanne Mullowney, Chair of the Ewing Green Team and lifetime gardener, and Glenn Steinberg, Chair of the English Department at TCNJ and long-term wildlife gardener, will introduce the National Wildlife Federation’s program, explain how to work the program to certify your garden, as well as how Ewing as a community is working the program.

Why We Need to Bring Nature Home to Our Own Backyards

Sixty percent of the world’s wildlife populations have been lost in just over the last forty years. SIXTY percent! That is the estimate from the latest Living Planet Report[1] published recently by the World Wildlife Fund. We have also personally taken note of the loss of local wildlife. Where are the boundless flocks of migrating birds that filled the autumn skies of our youth, the omnipresent lightning bugs that lit up our backyard summer evenings, the bug-splattered windshields from our driving trips, the butterflies, the bees, the bats…?

Habitat loss from suburban expansion and industrial agriculture are key. Suburban neighborhoods have exchanged healthy native habitats for vast stretches of manicured lawns which contribute little of ecological value. Industrial agriculture also plays a heavy role in unsustainable loss of habitat while also promoting synthetic chemicals and monocropping. We depend upon wildlife for critical ecosystem services and we wonder if we are destroying our planet’ s ability to support our way of life.

Joanne Mullowney states: “As a life-long gardener, my garden has always brought me a great deal of enjoyment and peace. Since I’ve started “re-wildling” my garden, I’ve realized what a sterile environment I’ve provided in the past. Gardening for wildlife has given me a truer enjoyment of the natural world and created a deeper connection to nature.”

How You Can Help

If you too are alarmed about the extent of this crisis and wonder what you can do to ensure that your children and grandchildren will be able enjoy the natural world as we did, we invite you to follow the example of members of Wild About Ewing, volunteers from Ewing’s Green Team and Environmental Commission who work to promote wider use of native plants and sustainable gardening practices, key components required to certify Ewing as a Community Wildlife Habitat recognized by the National Wildlife Federation. To become certified in the program, Ewing needs to accumulate 250 points in certified gardens from private properties, public spaces and schools. Each garden should support our native birds, insects, small mammals… by providing the essential life sustaining requirements of food, water, cover and places to raise young.

Members of Wild About Ewing are taking action for vanishing wildlife species and all Ewing property owners are encouraged to “bring nature home” on their own properties and join them in making a difference.

Wild About Ewing is conducting a public outreach campaign to property owners in Ewing to encourage them and assist them in certifying their properties. More information is available on the group’s website, http://ewingwildlifegardens.com/ and the Ewing Green Team and Environmental Commission’s Facebook pages.

by Glenn Steinberg

Carolyn Summers’ Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010) is an excellent book. It begins by laying out the reasons to garden with native plants (which the book insistently calls “indigenous plants”). Its reasons include providing habitat for birds, bees, and bugs, as well as making use of fantastic indigenous plants that simply don’t get enough play in the big-box nursery business. The book also discusses the jargon of the nursery business and the implications of that jargon for the gardener who wants to be ecologically responsible (such as how to know when cultivars and hybrids successfully function like native plants and when they don’t).

It spends considerable time talking about native alternatives to popular invasive species (such as Norway Maple, Bradford Pear, and Forsythia). The most interesting part of the book (to me) was a lengthy section on how to use native species in popular garden designs (including the street tree, traditional foundation plantings, a Japanese garden, and a cottage garden). Another section discusses how to mimic natural landscapes in your garden (such as woodlands, meadows, sandplain grasslands, heaths, and salt marshes). Needless to say, the book covers a lot of ground, and for that reason, my one criticism of it is that there were times when I’d have liked more depth and less breadth. But overall, it is an excellent book for anyone interested in incorporating more native plants into the garden.

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Sixty percent of the world’s wildlife populations have been lost in just over the last forty years. Sixty percent! That is the estimate from the latest Living Planet Report[1] published recently by the World Wildlife Fund. Ewing’s Environmental Commissioners and Green Team members have noted their alarm about the loss of biodiversity and vanishing wildlife in numerous published materials and posts. We have read reports that inform us that the “current massive degradation of habitat and extinction of many of the Earth’s biota is unprecedented and is taking place on a catastrophically short timescale.”[2] We have also personally taken note of the loss of local wildlife. Where are the boundless flocks of migrating birds that filled the autumn skies of our youth, the omnipresent lightning bugs that lit up our backyard summer evenings, the butterflies, the bees, the bats…?

Habitat loss is key. Suburban neighborhoods have exchanged healthy native habitats for vast stretches of manicured lawns which contribute little of ecological value. Industrial agriculture also plays a heavy role in unsustainable loss of habitat while also promoting synthetic chemicals and monocropping. We depend upon wildlife for critical ecosystem services and again, we wonder if we are destroying our planet’ s ability to support our way of life.

If you too are alarmed about the extent of this crisis and wonder what you can do to ensure that your children and grandchildren will be able enjoy the natural world as we did, we invite you to follow the example of two of Ewing’s Environmental Commissioners, both wildlife champions, who work to promote and protect wildlife habitat and diversity on their own properties. Ewing Environmental Commissioner, former chair, and avid birder Lee Farnham participates in Project FeederWatch, a citizen science program run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that counts birds and species at local feeders from November through April each year. This project helps scientists quantify the health of bird populations around the nation. And Environmental Commissioner and Green Team Chair Joanne Mullowney comes at the problem from her long-term gardening experience and now gardens for wildlife on her National Wildlife Federation certified property. They are taking action for vanishing wildlife species and we encourage you to read on to learn how you can do the same.

National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife Program

The goal of the National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife Program is to encourage all land owners to live more sustainably and harmoniously with nature on their own properties. This means changing landscape management practices to support wildlife by (1) gardening organically and eliminating the application of synthetic chemicals to the landscape, (2) removing some of your lawn to provide food, cover and shelter for wildlife thru the establishment of native plant communities, and (3) providing the water sources, however small, that wildlife needs to survive.

Lest you think that gardening for wildlife does not fit the suburban landscape ethic, we strongly disagree. A well-maintained habitat garden will not only be a refuge for our vanishing wildlife; but can be structured and beautiful. Joanne participates in the Green Team’s Annual Garden Tour and is proud to invite people to visit her gardens during the Tour each year.

If you would like to learn more about how to provide habitat in your own yard and gardening for wildlife, we have enrolled Ewing in the National Wildlife Federation’s Community Gardening for Wildlife Program. See our new website, the Ewing Community Wildlife Habitat Project, and join us to protect wildlife in Ewing. There are currently about 50 certified gardens in and about town.

Project FeederWatch

Project FeederWatch, a program for birders, is a citizen science program run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada and is a November-April survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards and common areas in North America. Participants count the birds they see at their feeders and their species on a regular schedule and send their counts to Project FeederWatch. Anyone interested in birds can participate.

This fall and winter season, Lee is once again going to pick up his binoculars to count the birds that visit his backyard feeders for project scientists. His beautiful and wonderfully wooded backyard is ideal for his avian visitors and offers plenty of shelter, cover and food (and really should be NWF certified).

Lee’s observations will be added to those of thousands of others across North America to help understand the distribution and abundance of birds that visit American feeders. This data also helps scientists to understand:

Changes in the winter ranges of feeder birds

The kinds of foods and environmental factors that attract birds

How disease is spread among birds that visit feeders

His data can help scientists show how climate change and decreased habitat are impacting winter bird communities.

In the coming months we will be posting the results of his weekly backyard observations. If you feed the birds in your backyard, you too can take on the role of citizen scientist while enjoying avian backyard wildlife up close this coming FeederWatch season. All you need to do is to install a feeder, count the birds that visit, and report your results to FeederWatch scientists. For more information about how you can participate go to https://feederwatch.org/about/how-to-participate/.

You may not be a birder, but there are many ways people participate in citizen science activities to help scientists around the country monitor and manage wildlife populations. From the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project, to the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program, to the annual Horseshoe Crab Count during spawning season, and the spring and fall seasonal butterfly counts for the North American Butterfly Association, there are many opportunities to do so and the contributions from citizen scientists provide data on scales previously unattainable for most research teams. We also believe that anyone can plant native plants in their yards and learn to garden more sustainably.

Join us. You will reap a truer enjoyment of the natural world and a deeper connection to nature. Do it because wildlife matters and is worth protecting.

The first frost has come and gone and today it is sunny, humidity-free and gorgeous. We love autumn. We are finally leaving the hot, sticky days of summer behind for the cooler, more breathable days of fall. Soon the neighborhood trees will blanket the ground with their last gift of the growing season. This seasonal leaf drop can recharge your landscape and create habitat for wildlife. So, don’t treat your leaf litter as trash, but rather as the gift that it truly is to the millions of tiny creatures that are a part of our gardens’ ecosystems.

The Benefits of Leaf Litter

Raking up and disposing of our leaves, chopping down dead flower stalks and grasses all contribute to a manicured appearance which we have been conditioned to think of as the norm. However, in nature, trees don’t drop their bounty at the curb for pick up, but rather they blanket the earth while providing a host of ecological benefits.

Leaves provide an insulating winter cover in the garden for plants and those tiny creatures that sustain life in the garden. We encourage you to mulch with fallen leaves. Wherever possible, leave them to decompose where they fall in your garden beds. Or settle the leaves under the branches of your shrubs. Give it a year or so and your leaf litter will have broken down while providing mulch and increasing the soil’s water retention abilities.

You can also rake out some of the leaves from the beds that are simply too much and might smother tender plants and cause them to rot over the winter. Add them to the compost pile or the leaf pile on the lawn while the rest remain in the beds. Then take your mulching mower and chop them up into small pieces. Rake up most of the chopped leaves and place them back in the garden around shrubs and plants. Now that they are greatly reduced in volume they contribute to the more manicured look that suburban mores demand. The remainder can stay on your lawn and decompose there. Do this as needed until the end of the season and the leaves will break down over the winter providing your soil with valuable nutrients all the while enhancing wildlife habitat. One incidental benefit is that of reduction of Township resources allotted to fall cleanup, saving taxpayer dollars.

While you might think that this leaves the yard looking a little less than perfect, you are nourishing the landscape and providing valuable resources and habitat for wildlife.

The Benefit of Providing Habitat

This somewhat messy yard contributes yet another important benefit – habitat. While not a traditional concern of the average gardener, we believe it should be. Did you know that despite its not so perfect look, leaf litter provides an important foraging space and shelter for a wide variety of birds, small mammals and insects? Also providing benefit is the untrimmed garden where ladybugs and lacewings reside in native grasses and pollinating bees settle in hollow plant stems. Butterflies and moths winter in chrysalides on the ground and baby spiders hide out amid the decaying plant stems. Birds feed from dried seed heads in winter.

Some wildlife use the leaf litter and other dead vegetation to insulate them from winter’s chill, while others, such as earthworms feed on the litter, breaking it into smaller pieces. Bacteria and fungi in turn convert theses smaller pieces into nutrients which then sustain neighboring plants. They in turn help support biodiversity by becoming food themselves. Toads, beetles, ladybugs and much more also live in your backyard’s leaf litter. Each is an integral part of the food web.

Support Wildlife Thru Your Not So Perfect Yard

We recommend the following practices from the Habitat Network to help you in your quest to provide habitat and reduce your ecological impact. Adopting good practices in the fall also leaves you well set for spring in the garden.

Leave your leaves on the property (Leaves are too valuable a resource to dispose of!)

Leave them in the garden beds when you can, mow them or compost them.

Allow dried flower heads of some of your garden favorites to stay standing in your garden.

The dark stems and flower heads of some of our native flowers look gorgeous against the snow and nothing is more exciting than seeing our small winged friends feasting upon the seed heads.

Let your ornamental grasses grow tall and seed.

Don’t cut down your ornamental grasses. They provide shelter for the insects that pollinate our gardens and feed fledgling birds and other wildlife. Not to mention that they also look fabulous swaying in the wind. They make a fabulous addition to the fall (and winter) landscape.

Build a brush pile with fallen branches instead of removing them.

If you build it, they will come. This author no sooner established a small brush pile in a back corner in the yard and it was inhabited.

Forget the chemicals. (This one is not hard. Just do it!)

Finally, don’t be in a rush to begin your garden cleanup in the spring. Wait until after several 50℉ days to begin, when spring has really arrived, allowing overwintering pollinators to move on first. You gave them a home all winter; don’t yank it away from them too soon.

Vanishing Habitat

As habitat for wildlife is decreasing, so too is wildlife, and at an alarming rate. A recent National Wildlife Federation newsletter states: More than half the world’s wildlife has vanished since 1970.1 This includes mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Quite simply, we’re destroying our planet’s ability to support our way of life.

Wildlife needs habitat to survive and we need to do a better job balancing the need to provide habitat for animals’ survival against commercial forces. Habitat requires food, water and shelter and even a small yard can support birds, butterflies, beneficial insects, and small animals thru proper landscaping and landscaping habits. They need more than lawn and it is important to provide trees, shrubs, and other plants (particularly native varieties and a topic for another post) that shelter and feed wildlife.

We ask you to adopt a somewhat messy yard and eschew the leaf disposal. Keep your leaves so that they can decompose naturally in your own yard and support the butterflies and other small insects that live in the leaf litter. To learn more about how we are promoting gardening for wildlife, take a look at our initiative – the Ewing Community Wildlife Habitat Project. During this season of renewal so essential to preserving the next generation of wildlife, we invite you to join with us and pledge to garden messy. Then put your feet up and enjoy the season.

As we recently posted, we are in the midst of the worst recycling environment which we have seen in the last 20 years and all indications are that the market for recycling materials will not improve in the foreseeable future. You may have read about the restrictions placed by China on importing recyclable materials from the United States. China has closed its doors to many types of recycling materials and is requiring that the material be 99.5% free from contamination. According to the staff at the Mercer County Improvement Authority (MCIA), the contamination rate for recycling collected from Mercer County communities is 11.4%. This means that we have significant work to do to make our recycling acceptable for the market.

China was also the largest consumer of US recyclable volume and no longer is purchasing the volumes that it did in the past. This means that there is a glut of supply in the market which is significantly driving down the value of this materials. As a result, in many cities across the nation, recyclables are ending up in landfills.

What this Means for Us

We must do a better job of recycling or face:

Higher taxes because of skyrocketing recycling costs.

More landfills to bury contaminated recycling.

Risks for wildlife, waterways, oceans and the quality of life on our planet.

Imperiled futures for our children and grandchildren.

There is no magic want to wave away our trash! We are now facing the consequences of thoughtless consumption and waste, We MUST rethink our disposable lifestyles. In some of our upcoming posts, we will discuss ways in which each one of us can make a difference in combating this relentless crisis.

Ewing’s Green Team and Environmental Commission have joined together to publish a new addition to our Sustainability Series of publications, the attached recycling flyer, Trash Talk: Recycling in Crisis, for easy reference to answer your recycling questions.

To summarize: One piece of garbage makes it all garbage! We advocate that when it doubt, throw it out! We ask that all residents keep the following do’s and don’ts in mind when recycling:

Recycling Do’s and Don’ts

DO remember the first of the 3Rs of recycling: Reduce. Make every effort to reduce the amount of waste that you produce. Single-use plastics are a significant component of that waste stream because they “don’t go away and essentially, last forever. Make every effort to eliminate single-use items such as plastic grocery bags, straws, utensils and cups, bottled water, take-out containers… Use reusable versions of those products instead.

DO recycle all empty bottles, cans, paper and cardboard.

DO recycle clean materials: i.e. keep foods and liquids out of recycling.

DO keep plastic bags out of recycling.

DO check out this site for more information about how you can do your share to Reduce | Reuse | Recycle.

DON’T bag your recyclables. Plastic bags and film get tangled in the machinery. (Our local supermarkets have plastic bag collection bins at their entrances.)

DON’T include soiled food items. They can turn an entire load of recycling into trash.

DON’T add sharp or dangerous materials like needles and electronics. They can cause injury to workers.

DON’T include bulky items like propane tanks or construction debris (no wood). The Township Convenience Center at 136 Scotch Road will take a lot of materials that you cannot leave at the curb. Please check our website or call 609- 882-3382 for accepted materials.

DON’T add items that are not on the list of accepted materials. This will contaminate the entire load.

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American elms were the dominant tree species along city and suburban streets across the Eastern United States through the first half of the 20th century. These graceful, towering trees with their vase-shape form created cathedral-like canopies. The elm was prized for its fast growth that provided quick shade and for its ability to tolerate poor soil conditions along city streets.

Disaster struck when elm logs shipped from Europe to the United States released the European elm bark beetle, carrier for the fungus that causes Dutch Elm Disease. First found in Ohio in the 1930s, it spread from state to state and by the mid-60s it had killed millions of trees, leaving cities with the task of removing thousands of massive elms.

The loss of the American elm as a street tree left a hole that was difficult to replace. Maples and ashes were planted in larger numbers along streets to replace the elm, but now ash tree populations are being decimated by another introduced pest, the Emerald ash borer.

The search for an elm resistant to Dutch elm disease that grows in the typical vase–shaped form has been going on for decades. Three promising American elm cultivars, ‘Valley Forge’, ‘Princeton,’ introduced by Princeton Nurseries from around Kingston, and ‘New Harmony,’ are showing good Dutch elm disease resistance.

On Arbor Day [April 27th] a ‘Princeton’ elm tree donated by members of the Environmental Commission and Green Team was planted along the driveway to the Benjamin Temple House at Drake Farm Park. Mayor Steinmann spoke to those gathered about the importance of planting trees in Ewing Township.

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Meetings

The Ewing Environmental Commission meets monthly on the 3rd Tuesdays. Members of the public are welcome to attend.Location: Ewing Senior and Community Center, 999 Lower Ferry Rd., Ewing Twp.Time : 6:30 - 8:30 pm